[Robert Kroetsch's] novels seem to defy the existential despair characteristic of contemporary prairie fiction both rural and urban. Kroetsch's anti-heroes are painfully aware of their isolation in a meaningless world running to waste; but they escape their anguish … through sheer gusto. Kroetsch's prairie men are the inheritors of the stonepicker's simple determination to endure and of … unregenerate, saucy humour, but they have an unquenchable exuberance which transcends both.

Johnnie Backstrom, the narrator and protagonist of The Words of My Roaring (1966), is, at thirty-three and six foot four, the giant of a man so typical of the prairie novel. Johnnie, the local undertaker, is running against Doctor Murdoch, the incumbent, for a seat in the Alberta legislature. He backs into a rash promise to bring the constituents rain before election day, a promise which in 1935 had particular appeal to drought-stricken electors. Johnnie was a prairie dreamer from the time...